1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning apparatus for cleaning photosensitive material transported by a transporting mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
Photosensitive material, such as a photographic film, is subjected, after its exposure with an image by means of a camera, to a development process by a developing device and then this developed film is subjected to a printing process for printing its developed image on to a print paper. As such photographic film, there is one known as shown in FIG. 4 for use in the new system commonly referred to as Advanced Photography System or APS for short. This film 1 includes, in addition to an image recording area 1a, an upper and lower pair of magnetic recording areas 1b disposed upwardly and downwardly of the image recording area for allowing reading and writing of various kinds of information to and from these areas. The information recording operation to the magnetic recording portions of the film is effected at the time of photography for recording such information including exposure conditions such as an exposure time period, an aperture value, use or non-use of a flash and such peripheral data as the date of photography and so on. Then, these pieces of recorded information are read by a magnetic head of a photographic processing system, which then develops and prints this film in accordance with the information read. Reversely, this magnetic head of the photographic processing system writes printing conditions used in the printing operation on to the print paper into the magnetic recording areas 1b of the film.
For assuring accuracy in the above-described information reading and writing operations between the magnetic recording areas of the photographic film and the magnetic head, it is necessary to remove `dust` or any other foreign substance which may adhere to the surface of the photographic film. Especially, in the case of the developed film after the developing process, the `dust` is understood to include excess developing liquid coagulated and deposited on the film surface. With adhesion such dust to the film, accurate reading and writing operation of the magnetic information may become impossible.
In order to solve the above problem, conventionally, when the film is discharged from the developing unit or the film is charged to the photographic processing system, an operator manually cleans the film surface by wiping it with cloth or the like.
However, such manual cleaning operation of the film by the operation is very troublesome and inefficient. Hence, there has been keen demand for improvement in this respect.
In view of the above-described state of the art, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a cleaning apparatus capable of automatically removing dust from the surface of photosensitive material through ingenious utilization of a transporting mechanism (e.g. a spool for taking up into a film cartridge the material after its development in the developing unit and an electric motor mechanism for rotatably driving the spool) incorporated in the developing unit (or photographic processing system).